Quick Testimonial on Article Syndication/List Building

13 replies
I frequent the forum parasitically soaking up free information like a sponge, without giving much back, so I'd be remiss if I didn't at least share a follow up on my article syndication/list building experiment from a couple months ago. I won't link to the original, it doesn't matter.

I posed the question here on how to do article syndication, and simultaneously asked if list building was really all it was cracked up to be, specifically in a niche where I sell 6 versions of one single, large physical product that ranges in price from about $350 to $550. I received plenty of good ideas on how to do both parts of this, took the info, and ran.

Here are my results:

As far as article syndication, I found and emailed just over 100 people who had websites I wanted to place an article on. About 20 responded and that resulted in articles landing on about 10 websites. Ironically it was the 10% of the original group that a couple people told me to count on with this sort of 'cold-contacting'. Two of those people saw that I was placing the articles on my own website first (as I was instructed to do by Alexa, MYOB, etc.), and told me they would no longer accept articles. Good riddance. That leaves eight people where I am still sending articles once a week or so.

My squeeze page is terrible, 10% are subscribing, but I have managed to get a couple hundred subscribers in this time. Where things shine however, are conversions to sales. While my ecommerce site converts at about 2%, my follow up sequence of the squeeze page (which is on a separate website) is converting at over 10%.

The traffic is purely from my article syndication efforts, so it's free. The sales funnel has resulted in 21 sales at an average of $150 profit each. So that's $3150. Meanwhile, that same amount of traffic to my ecommerce site would only result in 2% conversions (and I'm spending PPC to get them there, so there are costs involved.

So nothing new and exciting here, I just wanted to come along and mention how, just like I've been told but chose to ignore over the past two years or so that I've actually been actively involved in IM, article syndication is awesome, and building a list is super awesome. Especially as down the road there will be upsell/cross sell opportunities for my list. Thanks to those who helped me!
#article #building #quick #syndication or list #testimonial
  • Profile picture of the author fin
    These are my favorite types of threads in this forum.

    Especially this one seen as article syndication will be my number 1 priority.

    Well done.
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    • Profile picture of the author fin
      Also, do you mind sharing what kind of websites are posting your articles.

      Are they ezines, high traffic blogs, low traffic, static sites, etc.

      Cheers.
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      • Profile picture of the author David Sneen
        Great numbers! Congratulations! It's awesome that your learning/hard work is yielding those awesome returns!!!
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        David Sneen
        It's what you do when no one is watching
        that determines what you will be able to
        do when everyone is watching.
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  • Profile picture of the author dcmarketer
    Legion,

    Good work man. Now, time to upscale your efforts mate...

    Originally Posted by LegionNate View Post

    The sales funnel has resulted in 21 sales at an average of $150 profit each. So that's $3150. Meanwhile, that same amount of traffic to my ecommerce site would only result in 2% conversions (and I'm spending PPC to get them there, so there are costs involved.
    $3150 / $8 = 393 articles you can have outsourced and written for you (articlez.com).

    Alternatively you can lower the volume and increase the quality of the articles if you pay a little more per article.

    If you offer those articles exclusively to another website as purely unique (no one else, not even you will publish them), they'll get snapped up in a second by the publishers you're dealing with. You'll even be able to branch out to more sources / publishers pretty easily.

    Sounds like you might need to get beyond the idea of gifting content like this (seems like you want to publish everything on your own website first) - but by offering exclusive publishing rights it will increase your publishing rate 10 fold. It should be seen as additional content generation, to that which you will continue to do on your own website, not "an alternative".

    Keep in mind, that would also be another 300+ (lifetime) links back to your website for your SEO, as well as the direct traffic it will bring.

    Best...

    Duncan Carver
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    WordPress Advertising Network -> https://www.sponsorthisarticle.com/

    Earning monthly recurring revenue from all of your blog posts. Set your own pricing. Compatible with AdSense and other 3rd party networks.

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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Nate,

      Good start. Now leverage it.

      First thing is to increase the conversion on that opt-in page. If it's a true opt-in form, with nothing to do but sign up or go somewhere else, you should be able to get that to 40-60%. Sometimes more.

      That alone would quadruple your results from the same effort. And it's doable. If you want some suggestions, post the link here or PM it to me. I'm sure we can help with it.

      The next step is to look at the emails you sent those first 100 people. What did the ones you sent to the folks who accepted the offer have in common? And what kinds of sites were they running.

      Focus the next 100 on people running sites with those same things in common, and use the best converting format from the original emails. Plus, point them to your archive of existing articles, so they can see the quality of material they'll be getting.

      You should be able to get another 10-15 of that next 100 to go for it. At that point, you've more than doubled the number of publishers in your network. If you manage to get the 40%+ on your opt-in page along with that, you'll have multiplied the potential monthly value of your network by a factor of 8 or more.

      There's an upper limit to the conversion rate you're likely to achieve with the opt-in page, so that can only be increased just so much, depending on the niche and the offer. The theoretical maximum is slightly over 100%, but in reality you'll rarely get much over 80%, even in the most focused niches.

      60% is my personal target. When I hit that, I focus on other things. With my confirmation process, I can usually get the total visitors to confirmed subscriber rate to 50% on a consistent basis.

      The next steps are:

      1: Get more publishers in the network

      2: Do special content for the "exclusives," if they have the quality and quantity of visitors to warrant it.

      3: Look for other syndication systems and traffic channels. For example, test adding your Twitter and Facebook links in the author's credits. In some niches, that can create a whole other way to stay in contact with your audience that can be effective.

      4: Look for ways to re-purpose your content. Example: Look for ways to expand your most popular articles into "Kindle Singles." Just make sure there's enough difference that Amazon doesn't nail you for selling stuff on their site you're giving away elsewhere. That means expanded and completely rewritten content, along with a different title.

      Or just use the expanded reports as giveaways or paid products at your own site.

      5: Keep adding everything to your archive.

      6: Increase your dollars per visitor. More people buying, more money per sale, and more sales per customer.

      Standard stuff. But stuff that most people ignore. This sort of boring detail is the difference between doing okay and doing serious volume.

      Always look for ways to leverage what you've already created.


      Paul
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      Stop by Paul's Pub - my little hangout on Facebook.

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  • Profile picture of the author LegionNate
    Hey everybody, thanks so much for all the responses. I am absolutely going to be working on scaling it up. I will take those recommendations and definitely come back with an update. Who would have thought, building a list really IS a good idea
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  • Profile picture of the author TiffLee
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author brians34
      When using article syndication, how can you be sure that the ezines, high traffic blogs, low traffic blogs, static sites, etc. are going to actually use the link to your site after you send them the article?:confused:


      Is there a way to look through a blog to see if the poster does even use other's articles before you waste your time trying to contact them?
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  • Profile picture of the author LegionNate
    Brian, yes there is a way. First of all, the way I found these blogs in the first place was by doing a Google search of the following string: My niche + "guest post".

    Typing "guest post" like that in quotes meant it would return websites where that term was written on them, and that term is written on them because they are writing it at the top of people's guest posts. You could click on a few of the links in these other people's guest posts to get an idea if the links are going to the right place, but my experience is that 100% of the links in these type of guest posts go to the right place.

    Seeing as it is working for these authors, you can probably rest assured that your links will go to your website as well.
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    Do you have Buyer IM leads? We have sales floors with Great DPL. PM me.


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    • Profile picture of the author cashp0wer
      I didn't think article marketing was dead and now you have proved that. Honestly, Nate, you are doing great and now you just need to keep going and keep building.
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    • Profile picture of the author brians34
      Originally Posted by LegionNate View Post

      Brian, yes there is a way. First of all, the way I found these blogs in the first place was by doing a Google search of the following string: My niche + "guest post".

      Typing "guest post" like that in quotes meant it would return websites where that term was written on them, and that term is written on them because they are writing it at the top of people's guest posts. You could click on a few of the links in these other people's guest posts to get an idea if the links are going to the right place, but my experience is that 100% of the links in these type of guest posts go to the right place.

      Seeing as it is working for these authors, you can probably rest assured that your links will go to your website as well.
      Thanks Nate
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  • Profile picture of the author svsets10
    Absolutely fantastic. This gives me hope. Great job
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  • Profile picture of the author JRJWrites
    Nate! How's it going along now, six months later?
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    • Profile picture of the author Janice Sperry
      Originally Posted by jrjohn View Post

      Nate! How's it going along now, six months later?

      I think you mean 18 months.
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